


The Labyrinth

by direpenguins



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M, Gen, Melisandreweek
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-27
Updated: 2014-07-27
Packaged: 2018-02-10 16:11:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2031459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/direpenguins/pseuds/direpenguins
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There must be some comfort, she supposed, in harboring a heart full of doubt. Even if it was a false comfort, the Enemy’s deceit—the belief that, by not choosing one path over another, one could avoid stumbling down the path into the abyss.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Labyrinth

On that dawn that saw Renly’s death, Melisandre wondered if she hadn’t made a grave mistake.

Of the need to kill Renly, she had no doubt at all. She had watched in the flames as his army crushed Stannis’s forces in a battle that could cost the world its savior if it was not averted. Renly’s death meant Stannis would live and gain the men he needed to take his seat in King’s Landing. The choice was clear.

Stannis slept restlessly while she birthed the shadow he had cast. She watched but made no move to soothe him when he thrashed or cried out; it would be dangerous to wake him too soon.

As the first rays of R’hllor’s sun seeped in between the tent flaps and she rose to give thanks, he did not stir. He had planned to attack at first light, she recalled; the king was not a man for tardiness. When his young squire Devan entered and tried to rouse him — tentatively at first, then more and more frantically — a worm of fear grew and coiled about her insides.

Why did he not wake? Did his fires burn so low that he could not find his way out of the Other’s darkness? Impossible, she thought. Any man should have enough life in him to birth one, two, even three shadows without danger; and Stannis was no ordinary man. Surely R’hllor’s chosen would be under R’hllor’s protection.

But one could never make such assumptions, with the fate of the world at stake. Though she could feel her magic growing in potency after the red comet appeared, she was still much less powerful than she had been in Asshai. She’d had to draw more from Stannis than she expected. What if she had drawn off too much?

The Lord’s champion, beset by enemies at all sides — could she herself have unwittingly dealt the fatal blow?

When he finally startled awake, she gave silent thanks to R’hllor.

 

 

It had been with awe and a kind of fear that she came to realize what it meant to have the Lord’s champion be flesh and blood. When she was young, she had imagined that the reborn Azor Ahai would be taller than the great nightfire in the temple, with a voice like the pealing of bells and eyes of flame. Of course she had long since abandoned such childish notions. The son of fire must be a man, formed like other mortal men. Else there would be no need to seek him out and find him; all would know him for what he was.

The man she found on Dragonstone was not a nightfire, but a candle beneath an upturned bushel, shedding his light in vain. A younger brother shadowed by his elder, an older brother unheeded by the younger, a king whose kingdom shunned and deserted him. She understood, then, R’hllor’s great wisdom in sending her to tend him.

After the first shadow born of his loins, he never rested easy. When she came to soothe him as he tossed and turned, he would curl tightly into himself, sick with shame and with grief. “I know what it is to be troubled by nightmares,” she whispered to him. “In my dreams I have seen the horrors of the endless frozen night that awaits us if we should fail.”

It was a lie, of course. In the flames, to be sure, she had seen forests of shambling corpses, white and twisted like trees; great cities gone empty and silent, buried in ice. But the nightmares that plagued her rare stretches of sleep were of the past, not the future. There was no need for Stannis to know this, however. She was an instrument of R’hllor, not a woman, and certainly not some cowering slave girl. No doubt her dreams were sent by their Enemy, to show her how she had once been small, powerless, and alone.

_But I was never alone_ , she reminded herself. _R’hllor was with me even in that darkness_.

R’hllor’s champion would not be alone either. As frail as Stannis’s flame could be, she knew it carried light and warmth enough to wash over the whole world. This was one of the first lessons she learned long, long ago, before her eyes were opened in Asshai, even before her heart had come to truly know R’hllor’s greatness. She had learned it while lying on a cold and filthy floor, on nights that seemed longer than any winter—in pitch blackness, a single guttering candle burns brighter than the sun.

 

 

The defeat in Blackwater Bay cost Stannis dearly, and she had seen it coming. Her mistake was thinking that it had been averted with Renly’s death. Had she been with the king, she might have seen her error in time, might have turned the tide of the battle…

But Stannis had doubted her, as he now doubted himself. She could ill afford to doubt herself as well. Uncertainty was a luxury meant for novices, not for the savior of the world, nor for one who wished to guide him.

And yet, with so much at stake, neither could she afford to err in her judgment. She prayed for R’hllor to light her way, and gazed into the fire every night for hours on end, fearful of missing some vital sign or portent. She brewed potions that helped her to stay awake. Over time, she needed them less and less.

 

 

One night, the fire was different. No sooner had she glanced at it than it took on that unmistakable crackling timbre she had learned to recognize so long ago.

The flames roared green, like those that engulfed her king’s fleet in Blackwater Bay. As she watched, a dead man emerged from them. A gray man, he had once claimed, neither black nor white. But there was no mistaking the blackness of his intent, the cold steel dagger in his hand.

Even as she watched, unblinking, he turned the knife on her. She was not afraid. One must never carry fear with them into the flames.

Davos Seaworth was alive and plotting to kill her, as the old maester had done. He would come for her soon—the very next day. Of that she was certain. The flames were never more clear than when they showed her death.

It was Davos who had enabled her to slip under the spell-laden walls of Storm’s End and win the castle for their king. A man of low birth whom Stannis had raised to high honors, had trusted like none other. It was troubling that their Enemy should have gotten so close.

And yet it was difficult for her to think of Davos as an instrument of the Other. The darkness she saw roiling about and within him was anger, hatred, but also sorrow and grief. He had sons commanding ships in the king’s fleet, she recalled. That hungry green fire had devoured them all.

_Grief is born from love_ , she thought. _And love is born from R’hllor_.

 

 

The king betrayed no surprise or emotion at the news. Indeed, he gave no sign that he had even heard her, though she knew he had. She waited several minutes in silence as he stood, staring into the hearth, until she realized his lips had moved.

“Your Grace?”

Stannis cleared his throat. “I asked if he’s well.”

“He does not seem to be injured,” she said. “But he suffers from fever and chills. Maester Pylos is attending to him in the dungeons.”

The king nodded. He glanced at her for a moment, and she thought he would say something more; but his eyes were drawn to some movement in the flames, and he turned his back to her again.

Of late he had taken to standing at length gazing into hearthfires and braziers. She wondered if she had been wrong to show him that vision—dark shapes in the snow, torches blown out by a deathly chill. It was R’hllor who allowed him to see, she told herself.

Still, it was dangerous to look into the flames without the proper training. One who brings questions will see only his own answers; one who carries fear will see it reflected back upon him a thousandfold. She had known many who thought they knew their fate and had gone brazenly to their doom, and many more who spent their lives fleeing in vain from some half-glimpsed terror. Still others she had known who gazed into the flames and became lost, unable to tell the future from the past or the dead from the living, endlessly following the twisting paths of what may be and what will be and what will never be, until their bodies failed and the Other claimed them.

 

 

The first time she saw a man given to the flames, she had been younger than Edric Storm. She had shut her eyes and tried to shield her ears from the screams, but the smell had still made her retch.

Since that day, she had learned that no good comes of keeping one’s eyes shut. Whatever lay before her, it was best to look upon it plainly.

She knew this was a lesson Stannis, too, understood well.

When explaining how to awaken the stone dragon, she spoke of sacrifice and the power inherent in a king’s blood. She was careful not to mention the bastard boy directly. She did not need to. It was not only the memory of his brother’s insult that clouded Stannis’s face whenever he happened to glimpse the boy in the gardens.

One day he told her flatly, “I’ll not burn that child.”

“As you command,” she said, without misgivings, knowing she would be able to convince him before too long. _He is Azor Ahai; he understands the need for sacrifice_.

 

 

Weeks passed. The king continued to shut himself within his Stone Drum. Messages that arrived by raven went unanswered, piled high with unbroken seals, until the young maester shuffled them off to some corner or other.

Davos, too, remained shut away, and the king did not inquire after him again. Melisandre was not fooled into thinking that his knight’s plight did not weigh on Stannis’s mind, somewhere among the myriad dark thoughts that burdened him. It weighed on her mind as well. She saw no more of Davos in the flames, not since his murderous path had been snuffed out. She could not say for a certainty what path he was on now.

She descended into the dungeons to speak with Davos, hoping he would give her the reason she needed to condemn him or deliver him. She told him he must choose. Light or darkness. Life or death. “My heart is full of doubt,” was his only answer.

There must be some comfort, she supposed, in harboring a heart full of doubt. Even if it was a false comfort, the Enemy’s deceit—the belief that, by not choosing one path over another, one could avoid stumbling down the path into the abyss.

 

 

It was Alester Florent’s betrayal that finally roused Stannis to take interest in Dragonstone’s affairs again. “I did _not_ go to war with the Lannisters only to wed my daughter to one of Cersei’s horrors,” he said, brandishing the shaving knife as if were an executioner’s blade.

It was almost pleasant to hear the sharp outrage in his voice, after all these weeks of sullen brooding. “It seems Lord Alester’s faith did not survive the battle,” she said.

“Now his own brother is calling for him to be burned. These Florents certainly don’t waste time.”

She knew that Ser Axell had actually called for the burning of the traitor _s_ —more than one. “Ser Axell knows where his true loyalties lie—with you and with the Lord of Light.”

Stannis ground his teeth. “And once I burn his brother, I’ll be short a Hand. No doubt he hopes to take his brother’s place.” His gaze lingered a moment on the fire behind her, before he turned and began to pace.

She knew what he wanted to do—who he truly wished to name as his Hand. But his heart, too, was full of doubt. Davos’s crime was not less than Alester’s. Perhaps Stannis thought that to raise her would-be assassin to honors would be to do her an insult.

But insults were of no concern to her, and she did not fear for her own life.

As she turned to gaze into the hearthfire, she once again called to mind the Davos she had seen there, wreathed in darkness. Yet even in that darkness, some spark of R’hllor’s light must yet burn. He had pointed his knife at her, she recalled—never at the king.

_We all must choose._

“Your Grace,” she said, turning from the fire, “you should send for your Onion Knight.”

 

 

The night Davos told them that Edric Storm was gone, Melisandre knew that she had made a grave mistake.

Stannis did not comprehend at first—his mind leapt easily to that Lyseni pirate, to some shallow ploy for gold. But Davos’s eyes met hers, and the truth in them was clear.

If she had left him to the darkness, they would never have come to this path. Compassion was so often a traitor. Trying to save one man left one blind to the greater need. This was a lesson she had learned so many, many times; and yet she had not learned it at all.

Stannis drew Lightbringer from its sheath as if to deal with his traitorous Hand right then and there; but she could take no satisfaction from the king’s justice. Killing Davos now would not undo the damage that he had done, that she had allowed him to do. Burning him might yet save his soul, but what of their souls? What of all those yet living who would fall under the Enemy’s dominion?

Davos knelt before king and sword and unfolded a piece of paper that he had been clutching tight in his hand. She turned her eyes away, towards the fire in the hearth. Even now, in the depth of her error, she prayed R’hllor in his mercy might grant her some sign.

 

 

The ships at dock were being loaded late into the night. Tomorrow they would hoist anchor. At first light Alester Florent would burn, and Davos Seaworth would not.

Davos had destroyed their chance to wake the stone dragon with Edric Storm’s blood. And yet he had found the letter whose dire warnings no one else had noticed, that ragged slip of paper telling of invaders in the north and darker things to follow. Had she been right to bring him out of that dungeon, after all? Or would his lack of faith bring them some greater disaster in the future? The uncertainty was the worst thing.

She had to trust in R’hllor’s wisdom. Perhaps He had intended all this, to send them to the true battlefield. And there might be other chances, other sources of king’s blood… She packed that thought away as carefully as she packed her powders and potions in her old wooden travelling chest, safe for when she would need them.

It was past midnight when she found Stannis in his chamber, staring at the fire. He remained motionless as she slid her arms around him.

“Your Grace, you must rest,” she whispered. “You will need your strength. The flames have already foretold your battle in the north, a great victory.”

“You don’t know that,” he muttered. “These flames show you one thing and then another. How could you ever know...?” But he leaned into her touch and allowed her to draw him away.

Later, when he slept, she carefully slipped out and went to stand by the hearth. It had burned almost down to embers but at her approach they flickered, beckoning, and once more she sought that winding path R’hllor had laid before her.


End file.
